Feminist filmmakers tackle adult movie machismo

AFP, BERLIN

French actress, director, producer and writer Ovidie at a screening in October for her movie Everything is Better Than a Hooker in front of a poster announcing the Porn Film Festival in Berlin at the “Moviemento.”

Photo: AFP

Ethical, diverse and not a silicone breast in sight — feminist filmmakers are standing up to mass-market porn with adult movies free of male domination and gender stereotypes.

Their films aim to show realistic, consent-based and egalitarian sex instead of the superhuman bedroom exploits of macho studs and submissive women.

“Feminist porn is part of a fight against misogyny on the same territory and with the same weapons as the sex movie mainstream,” French filmmaker Ovidie, 38, told AFP at a recent film festival on the subject in Berlin.

The first attempts at feminist pornography date back to the 1980s in the US, but the movement has received a new lease of life in response to a flood of free online porn in the Internet age.

The easy availability of even hardcore porn online has raised concerns that a generation of young people is being exposed to material that could warp their sexual attitudes and expectations.

To counter this effect, Berlin’s center-left Social Democrats who govern the city-state in coalition with the Greens, are now proposing to use feminist adult films in sex education programs.

‘X-GIRL VS SUPERMACHO’

Traditional adult films “always follow the same kind of choreography... men dominate women,” said Ovidie, who has spearheaded the “femporn” movement in France.

In her Stories of Sex(es) and X-Girl vs Supermacho, women are no longer reduced to objects — on the contrary, they are in charge.

To be truly “feminist” the productions must meet several criteria, explained Laura Meritt, a German linguist and specialist on the movement.

In addition to portraying the desires “of all genders” — including of men, who in most porn are “merely reduced to their penis” — the cast must be “varied physically and culturally” and not of uniformly perfect physique, she said.

Condom use is a must and so are ethical “working conditions, based on consent, where everyone has the choice to take part in certain practices or not,” Meritt said.

An actress who goes by the name of Misungui Bordelle said the sex scenes are usually shot with “the least possible” interruption, rather than through the mainstream industry’s “methodical execution... with many takes.”

The American director Jennifer Lyon Bell, a 49-year-old Harvard graduate, in 2004 launched her company “Blue Artichoke Films,” specializing in movies that “portray sexuality in an emotionally realistic way.”

She sees her work as part of “sex-positive feminism” which, rather than seeking to abolish pornography, sees sexuality as the arena in which women must win their emancipation.

‘DROP IN THE OCEAN’

In 2006, Toronto hosted what organizers billed as the world’s first “Feminist Porn Awards” at its adult film festival, and similar events followed in Lausanne, Lisbon and Sydney.

In Europe, the biggest festival is organized annually in Berlin, attracting 10,000 visitors this autumn.

Despite this, feminist pornography is far from breaking into the mainstream.

“I have very little relationship with the mainstream industry. The festivals and modes of income are different, these are circles that rarely intersect,” said French director Lucie Blush, 30.

It is a view reflected in the global sex movie industry, where many are yet to see this type of film-making as competition, said Gregory Dorcel, manager at Marc Dorcel, one of the leading porn media groups.